Verse 5
Simeon and Levi are brethren - Not only springing from the same parents, but they have the same kind or disposition, head-strong, deceitful, vindictive, and cruel.
They have accomplished, etc. - Our margin has it, Their swords are weapons of violence, i. e., Their swords, which they should have used in defense of their persons or the honorable protection of their families, they have employed in the base and dastardly murder of an innocent people.
The Septuagint gives a different turn to this line from our translation, and confirms the translation given above: Συνετελεσαν αδικια εξαιρεσεως αυτων· They have accomplished the iniquity of their purpose; with which the Samaritan Version agrees. In the Samaritan text we read calu , they have accomplished, instead of the Hebrew כלי keley , weapons or instruments, which reading most critics prefer: and as to מכרתיהם mecherotheyhem , translated above their fraudulent purposes, and which our translation on almost no authority renders their habitations, it must either come from the Ethiopic מכר macar , he counselled, devised stratagems, etc., (see Castel), or from the Arabic macara , he deceived, practiced deceit, plotted, etc., which is nearly of the same import. This gives not only a consistent but evidently the true sense.
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